Sun Microsystems has announced the release of an open-source version of its Java Development Kit for Java Platform Standard Edition. Sun has contributed the software to the OpenJDK Community as free software under the GNU GPLv2. Sun also announced that OpenJDK-based implementations can use the JCK (Java SE 6 Technical Compatibility Kit) to establish compatibility with the Java SE 6 specification. OpenBSD has already started importing the release.

Haven't tried Netbeans for a while but do you still get the problem where if I dropped a button on the form, the button would expand to occupy the entire form? It's little things like this that spoil Java GUI IDEs.

That is the way java behaves. It is mostly based on layout managers to remove the requirment of manually coding all of your widgets to move properly when the window resizes. You can change that behavior by using null for the layout manager I believe.

Actually, once you get the hang of the various layout managers, coding a gui by hand isnt really that time consuming at all.

Haven't tried Netbeans for a while but do you still get the problem where if I dropped a button on the form, the button would expand to occupy the entire form? It's little things like this that spoil Java GUI IDEs.

Just use a different layout manager. The gridbag layout lets you put you controls in cells - columns and row. If you want pixel-level layout like other IDE's use, then use the Matisse Gui-builder in Netbeans 5+. I think it allows that kind of pixel-level layout.

However, I would discourage pixel-level layout. I believe it is better to learn to use layout managers, such as FlowLayout, CardLayout, GridbagLayout, etc. You will generate much more elegant interfaces that scale across many different kinds of devices (Desktop, Web, Cell, Mobile, etc).

The new GUI builder (Matisse) in Netbeans basically takes care of all the details to do with layout managers etc. It shows you guides that snap your buttons, text boxes etc for sizing placement setting standard gaps etc between components that snap your component into place.

By default the interface it produces scales when you size the window.

Combining Matisse and JRuby or JavaFX (F3) turns the Java / JRE into a powerful RAD environment. I will be very surprised if we don't see an explosion of such cases within a year.